Electronic surveillance

FBI hid microphones for secret warrantless surveillance near California courthouses

The defendants’ attorneys argue the secret surveillance recordings violated their clients’ constitutional rights – as well violated the rights of all the other people whose conversations were surreptitiously recorded. The FBI may tend to agree since federal prosecutors now say the recordings won’t be used as evidence against East Bay landlord Michael Marr.

Marr’s attorneys claim (pdf) the 364 recordings, or “dragnet electronic eavesdropping” conducted without judicial authorization – no warrant and no Title III order – violate the Fourth Amendment and the Wiretap Act. “Speaking in a public place does not mean that the individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy,” they wrote in a motion to suppress. They argue that not only should the unlawful recordings be thrown out, but that they should be able “to challenge other ‘tainted’ evidence that might have been obtained as a result of information the government got from the recordings.”